would like to spend $400 or less. gonna use it all the time. shows, hiking, etc etc. oh yea small is key. something that can fit in my pocket comfortably.
I love my olympus c-770 ultra zoom. the c-765 is great too, they both make really great pics. a photographer reccomended these to me, and man, are they good!
ray
i'm gonna 100% agree with ray on this one. i have the c-765 and love it. it does 4.0mp, 10x optical zoom, and great low light settings. infact, this camera has more options and better zoom than my first slr i had with its standard lense. its a little bulkier than a point-n-shoot because of the lense on it, but i can still fit in a small case and if my pants are baggy or if i'm wearing cargos, it'll fit nice and easily into the pockets.
here's some links to the pictures i've took with it
http://photobucket.com/albums/v283/Edventure/http://photobucket.com/albums/v290/SpeshulEd/ (all pictures as of 12/31/04 - none of the earlier dates were done with the c-765)
http://photobucket.com/albums/y137/travisatemyatari/those should give you a good a good idea of what the camera can do at shows. and if you go to
www.pricegrabber.com and do a search for it, you can easily find the camera for under/around $300 and i picked up a 512mb xD card for $80 from there too.
but i definitely recommend it, especially for concert photography where you don't want a full slr.